Putting The "F" In Friday

What a day!

I began the day by getting my teeth cleaned at 8am. What a great way to start your day; having expert practitioners in the ancient art of medieval torture perform their hideous acts of pain and suffering upon your poor defenseless mouth.

At the same time, Cindy was getting her driver's license renewed for 8 years even though the plan is that we'll only be here in Florida for another 8 months. Here was the funny (not) thing for her. They would not let her renew online and mail her license to her, insisting via a message in a postcard that she must show herself in person at the DMV office with a Social Security card, proof of her residential address (does the postcard they mailed to her count?) and her birth certificate or valid U.S. passport. My assumption, judging from what I had read in the news, was that these things were required to verify her identity and be sure she was not some kind of terrorist (they could have just ASKED me) and that is a good thing in these days. Right?

Instead, they tested her vision and hearing, took her picture and $26, and gave her a new license without ever requiring her to produce the documents they had insisted she bring. I feel so much safer.

We had a nice breakfast at Perkins (except for the part where they brought me the wrong order and I had to watch Cindy eat hers while I waited, empty place setting, in front of her until they brought the right order out 10 minutes later), stopped at the post office to mail some paperwork to my employer and then picked up some specialty boxes for framed paintings and pictures from the storage place. From there we stopped by Petsmart for some things for the critters and the went home where the real fun began.

We spent most of the day getting more things packed for storage or to give to Goodwill or to toss in the trash. I ask myself this every time, but HOW did we accumulate so much STUFF???? I made a trip with a full truck to Goodwill and a trip with a full truck to storage and filled our "hobo" with garbage, but we finally finished what we needed. Which was to have the hallway and my office ready for my fantastic son-in-law to come and paint this weekend. I got all the holes in the walls puttied up and sanded down to try and make the painting part go as quickly as possible.

My back is killing me, lol.

Then we paid (thankfully, only) $3.99 to watch "Knowing" on our Pay Per View. What a crappy, stinky, lousy ending. That doesn't even count the messed up stuff during the course of the movie, I was somehow able to overlook that. But bad endings leave a bad taste in your mouth about the entire experience.

Tomorrow will be a better day. This one was an "F."

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Saying "Goodbye"

Well, not really, more like "See you later."

Tomorrow morning our friend Rebecca and her mom will be leaving Orlando and moving to Waynesville, NC. The movers came this morning and picked up all their furniture and belongings. Earlier this evening Cindy, Amber and I took pizza over for a farewell dinner. The house looked very different and empty with nothing in it, but Rebecca looked full of happiness and anticipation.

It's not Ireland, but it's damn close, lol.

Safe journey.

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Second Novel By "The Time Traveler's Wife" Authoress Due In Fall

A few days ago my mother-in-law and I were discussing the upcoming theatrical release of "The Time Traveler's Wife", a novel we both read several years back (I read it on her recommendation after she shared with me how much she enjoyed it...plus I'm a sucker for anything that involves time traveling). We both are interested in seeing how the novel translates to the silver screen. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Our hope is that it does.

We also began talking about whether the authoress, Audrey Niffenegger, had published anything else since "The Time Traveler's Wife" but neither of us were aware of any of any other books by her coming out during the intervening years. So today I did some online research and discovered that she actually has a second novel entitled "Her Fearful Symmetry" set to hit bookstore shelves this September or October.

"Her Fearful Symmetry" is a supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery. They become involved in the lives of the other residents in the building and the ghost of their aunt. Ghosts, a cemetery and London; all the ingredients for the possibility of another great book from this multi-talented writer. I'm looking forward to reading her second published work.

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NEW! Wi-Fi Now FREE At Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble has offered Wi-Fi for customers over the past four years, but at a cost to those who did not have a qualifying AT&T plan. Today, B&N announced they will be offering complimentary Wi-Fi at its more than 700 stores. For customers with laptops, netbooks and smartphones, B&N's new free Wi-Fi will add another available hotspot for accessing the Internet.

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Another Black Mark Against Borders Books

A while back Borders pissed me off by firing a friend of mine (Hey Rhon!) and then a few months ago they made it personal and REALLY pissed me off by suddenly changing how they deal with coupons while I was trying to make a purchase...so much so that I left my entire and substantial stack of books sitting on their counter and walked out of the store. I haven't been in one of their stores since, choosing to take my book-buying dollars to Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Independent bookstores and Amazon rather than patronize a company that seems hell bent on making bad decisions.

Now they've done it again.

In an effort, it seems, to stop information about how their company is heading down the tubes, Borders appears to be prohibiting any employees from blogging, podcasting or posting anything in general that reflects negatively on the company by trying to get employees to sign a "non-blogging" contract.

Pissing off your customers with horrible customer service and pissing off your employees by restricting their right to free expression when they're not disclosing proprietary company secrets, is a sign that you're not long for the retail book business.

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Oldies But Goodies

About 3 weeks ago my mom celebrated her 75th birthday and yesterday my father-in-law celebrated the same milestone. You can imagine how old those events made ME feel. The largest folder of music on my iPhone is named "Oldies" and I find that there is less and less of today's music that I find appealing.

Speaking of oldies music, some of the artists from the 60's and 70's are re-releasing their hits with new lyrics to accommodate those of us who are growing older. Good news for those feeling a little older and missing those great old tunes...

Herman's Hermits - "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Walker"

The Bee Gees - "How Can You Mend A Broken Hip"

The Temptations - "Papa's Got A Kidney Stone"

Ringo Starr - "I Get By With A Little Help From Depends"

Marvin Gaye - "I Heard It Through The Grape Nuts"

Procol Harem - "A Whiter Shade Of Hair"

Johnny Nash - "I Can't See Clearly Now"

Leo Sayer - "You Make Me Feel Like Napping"

ABBA - "Denture Queen"

Paul Simon - "Fifty Ways To Lose Your Liver"

Roberta Flack - "The First Time I Ever Forgot Your Face"

Commodores - "Once, Twice, Three Times To The Bathroom"

Bobby Darin - "Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' A Flashback"

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Blast From The Past

One of the benefits of keeping a daily blog is when my memory starts fading (as it has already begun to do) I can always go to my posting files and remember what happened. For instance, below is a post I made in a previous blog 4 years ago today on July 25, 2005.

Blog Girl and I had a good weekend, although it was definitely busy! We got off work early on Friday to meet a friend who was in town for a few short hours. Then we raced out to Disney to meet some friends for dinner. Saturday morning we were up early and running errands for a good part of the day, then we got to go over to George and Caroline's to celebrate Caroline's "mmmph" birthday on Saturday night. Caroline is expecting little Rowan in November and is just so absolutely serene looking and glowing. To look at her, you'd never guess she is "mmmph" years old! Sunday morning we were up early to get some family members into EPCOT, then we raced from there to Downtown Disney so we could have lunch with Kirk and Laura at Earl of Sandwich. BG sees Laura at work every day, but I don't get to see her or Kirk all that often or as much as I'd like, so it was nice to spend some time with them. We walked around a little bit, then stopped in at Ghirardelli's Chocolates where BG and I split a hot fudge sundae. The rest of the day and evening was spent here in The Blog Cave getting caught up on some things, but not all things.

Ahhh, memories.

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Happy Birthday To Marvin The Martian

Believe it or not, this little guy is 61 years old today. Here's an entire rundown on him.

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First IT Professional Service Call

One of our instructors this past week showed us this video and I had to share it. Be sure to read the English sub-titles at the top of the screen, not the Norwegian ones at the bottom.

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Adventures in Scifi Publishing Podcast Is Back!

Hey, it's the middle of the day and all that but I wanted to get just a quick post up in a hurry to let you know that the Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast is back in production. Their first episode back features Greg Van Eekhout, author of Norse Code.

Check out the link above and give it a listen!

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Music While Writing?

The June issue of The Writer magazine had a small sidebar article on writers listening to music while writing. It made me think about the presence and effect of music when I'm writing.

I like to listen to music while writing. If I'm writing something non-fiction I can listen to just about any of the songs on my laptop or, when I'm home from the road, the CD's I own. What I mean to say is anything with lyrics in songs I enjoy. Admittedly though, there are times when I get SO into what I'm writing that I don't consciously hear the music or songs. I have had occasion to suddenly realize that I slid right through several songs and never realized they had played until I looked at my playlist.

But when I'm trying to create something fictional or especially if I'm writing dialog, I switch to either music only or to no music, no sounds at all. Complete silence. I need to be in my own head to "hear" my characters and what they are thinking or saying. But sometimes I listen to music that I think my character would listen to, in an attempt to get inside their (actually mine, of course, lol) head. Sometimes I listen to music that I feel helps set the "mood" for my scene setting or to get ME in the mood for the scene I want to write.

Do you listen to music while writing?

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Training Update

It's Wednesday evening and we had a very full, productive and enlightening day in class. In fact, so far the entire three days of class have been excellent. We have good instructors (three returning from my basic course 18 months ago and one new one from HQ) and a good well-rounded mix of twenty attendees. Out of those twenty I have serious doubts as to why three of them are in the class and why their regions paid good money to send them, but I could always be spectacularly wrong. It has happened. Anyway, that's all I'll say about that.

I had a really funny story to tell about one of my classmates, but the more I thought about it the more I decided I shouldn't because someone from the class (or the classmate himself) might read it and be hurt. Man, I need to lose my principles!

The highlight of our day was the mock briefing we were required to give to the top person when we are deployed. For our purposes, it's akin to giving the President of the United States a briefing report. Not something to be taken lightly. There were three of the instructors playing the role in separate rooms and the cool thing was they allowed us to pick the instructor to whom we wanted to give our briefing. I chose the one that I thought was the toughest and by that I mean;

1. Most experienced
2. Most qualified to critique my briefing
3. Most likely to be completely honest with me
4. Most likely to hold me to a higher standard


At the conclusion of my briefing she asked me what I thought I had done wrong and right and I answered. She looked at me and said, "It seems obvious that you have done this many times" and I chuckled and replied, "No ma'am, I've never given such a briefing, but thank you." I was then allowed to ask her questions and she gave me a wealth of information in a few short moments before the next student arrived to give his briefing.

A good day!

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14 Basic Skills All Men Should Possess

Someone passed along to me this list of the 14 Basic Skills All Men Should Possess. Not sure what the criteria was to establish these, but what the heck, I'll give it a shot at determining if I have the basics down.

Drive a stick-shift - Easily.
Hook up an entertainment center - As long as everything is color-coded, lol.
Fix a toilet - Not a problem, I've got the butt-crack to prove it.
Navigate a map and use GPS - Piece of cake.
Change the oil - Don't like to, but I can.
Balance a checkbook - Checkbook? I do all my banking online.
Cook the perfect steak - Perfect to whom? Cindy likes them, or says she does.
Swim the breaststroke - I am very good at breaststroking.
Write effectively - I leave that determination to my readers.
Dress for the occasion - Yeah. Cindy says I sometimes overdress.
Sew a button - Sure can. Thanks Nana.
Do laundry properly - Very properly.
Handle roadside emergencies - That's kind of broad, but for the most part yeah.
Build a fire - I can, but Cindy is better.

Do YOU have the basics down?

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Where Do You Write?

Last Sunday's New York Times had a small article about Roxana Robinson, a novelist who lives in Manhattan in a very nice apartment, yet chooses to do her writing in a sparsely furnished former maid's room rather than in her well-equipped office.

It got me to thinking about where we choose to write.

I used to write in my home office, a nice, cozy room in our home which held my computer, desk, books and reference materials. It also had a window which looked out on our backyard where Cindy would plant colorful flowers for me to look at when I gazed out, and a TV, VCR, and DVR to watch programs, as well as nice speakers my brother bought me so I could listen to quality sounds from the music on my computer.

I loved my office.

But eventually Cindy expressed concern that we were not spending much time together because I was spending so much time in my office. After giving it some thought I realized, especially with my new (at the time) laptop and our wireless connection, that I could easily do a lot of my online research work while sitting on the couch with Cindy watching a TV show together or while she read. I would use my office when I needed peace and quiet to create.

Now I am on the road a lot and most of my researching/writing time is spent at a desk in a hotel room at night after work or sometimes in a Panera. When I'm writing something non-fiction I can usually write with the TV on or in a place like Panera with its multiple distractions of people, talking, etc., but if I'm trying to conceive and create I really enjoy the solitude of the hotel room with the TV and most of my social media apps (Twitter, Facebook, IM) turned off and perhaps some music playing.

With our preparations to move to the mountains next year I have lost my office in our home to storage boxes, but I am fortunate enough to not have been home much during the past several months so I have not really missed it as much as I might if I had been home. And the cabin we are building will have a nice second floor office overlooking the creek that flows at the edge of our property. I am looking forward to writing in that atmosphere.

If you're a writer reading this; where do YOU write? I'd be interested in hearing all about it.

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Higher Learning For Vampires

Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.

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Wi-Fi Surprise!

I arrived safely at the secret training facility around 4:30 this afternoon after a 2-hour flight and a 90 minute shuttle bus ride out into the country. The best news is what you're seeing right now; since I was here 18 months ago they've added wireless connections to the cells...uh I mean dorm rooms. That means I can post here daily, in addition to the posts I've already written and scheduled for each day this coming week. So you might get double The Word Of Jeff pleasure!

I've already ironed my shirts for the week and had dinner at the dining hall. I also stopped by the "emporium" to buy a couple of postcards for loved ones. Now I'm back in my cell...uh I mean dorm room ready to get a good night's rest to be ready for the next four days of rigorous classroom training.

Wish me well, the competition is tough!

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Flying To D.C.

Back on the road...well "in the air" actually, today as I'll be flying to D.C. and then a shuttle bus ride out into the country for a week of advanced training at the isolated "school."

When I was there 18 months ago, the facility had no Internet connection in the dorm rooms or classrooms and cell phone signals were almost non-existent unless you walked to the outer edges of the compound. I've not heard that any of that has changed, so I've already scheduled blog posts for each day that I'll be away. I cannot leave the facility during the week I'm there, so I'll have no opportunity to find a wi-fi signal in a coffee or sandwich shop.

As usual (and if I can find a cellphone signal to use my iPhone) the best way to keep up with me in real time will be through Twitter.

At least it won't be icy cold and snowing like it was when I was there in January of 2008.

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Podcasts I Like

One of the things I really enjoy about my new iPhone is that the ease of downloading podcasts through iTunes has finally managed to make listening to them something that I am really into now. My daily 30 minute drive from my hotel to the office and return trip in the evening is time well-spent as I listen to programs of interest to me. Although I usually read at lunch time, I've begun listening to podcasts too

Here's my first impressions on some of the initial batch of podcasts on various subjects I downloaded and listened to over the past 2 weeks.

I really enjoy Mignon Fogarty's podcasts, Behind the Grammar and Quick and Dirty Tips For Better Writing. Mignon is the author of a helpful little book titled Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, but her podcasts are what a lot of people are familiar with. Three reasons I like her podcasts; First, she talks about some timely, informative aspects of grammar, writing and language that always leave me feeling like my time listening to her was well-spent. Second, she has some great guests and interviews with writers and people in the writing field. Third, it's her name, man! How could you NOT like someone named Mignon?

Chris Marquardt's Tips From the Top Floor photography podcast is emerging as one of my favorites in the photography field. His podcasts are short, usually confined to one subject and he gives clear, concise, easy to understand information. I've listened to three of his podcasts so far and all have been very informative.

Barnes & Noble Meet the Writers Podcast - the one I listened to was a very good interview with C. J. Box.


The Word Balloon podcast by John Siuntres - I listened to a lot of crappy comic book podcasts before finding this gem. I've listened to two podcasts and they were both excellent interviews with writers Greg Rucka and Katherine Immonem. I'm looking forward to the 2-parter with Brian Michael Bendis.

I'm exploring other podcasts in the genres above and a few other subject matter areas, so I might drop another post in here sometime in the future to give you my opinion on any other good ones I find.

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Leaving Kentucky - Playing The Odds

Today I fly out of Lexington, Kentucky for home. I only get to be home for 2 nights though, then I fly out Sunday for a week in a suburb of Washington, D.C. and I may be going somewhere else after that if things work out.

With as much traveling as I do in planes and rental cars, I guess it is inevitable that I sometimes find myself thinking about the odds of me dying in a plane crash or car wreck. That has been especially true during the past few days with the recent plane crashes and the weird Southwest Airlines hole-in-the-plane event that reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with a young William Shatner.

These thoughts usually come to me when I am in a plane that is taking off or landing (the two most dangerous times during a flight), but sometimes I look out the window at 30,000 feet and think it is a long way down (though it would only take 12 minutes or so to hit the ground from that altitude, falling at a rate of 32 feet per second) and sometimes when I am driving long distances on deserted back roads in the middle of night (or even in the middle of the day) I imagine several different scenarios that would all, in the end, find me dead on that road, hopefully not in an extremely painful way.

I don't think I'm being morbid, it's just an acknowledgment that, while I'm not a gambler at heart, I am constantly playing the odds when it comes to travel and my longevity.

On the other hand, I could drop dead from an aneurysm or heart attack in my hotel room, so it really does no good to dwell on the subject of when it might happen, does it?

But here is a little piece I wrote about a year ago during a flight. I've edited it a tiny bit over the past couple of days and added an important piece of physics information that I had to research, but the majority of it is over a year old and the words originated from 30,000 feet in the sky.

Cheers!

I'm sitting in my usual exit row window seat, watching the clouds below and around the plane as it pushes through the air at 30,000 feet. Sometimes, when there are breaks within the cloud bank below us, I can see the ground underneath our vehicle in the sky. It is so far below us that I only glimpse a dull splotch of green if is land and blue if it is water. It's very peaceful up here as the aircraft maintains a steady speed of 500 mph some 6 miles above the world.

But should the plane suddenly lose power, or worse, break apart from some structural stress, natural or man-made, I ask myself; how long would it take to fall to the ground? If I were to suddenly find myself sucked out of the exit row door I know I would lose consciousness very quickly due to the lack of oxygen, but I've also read that there is every chance I would regain consciousness as I fell into a more oxygen-rich part of the atmosphere. Of course the bad part of that news is that I would also be closer to the ground and, if I were not completely disoriented, would realize that the earth was quickly rushing up to meet me, or more accurately that I was falling faster and faster to the meet the earth.



In most scenarios of this type the odds are that I would still be strapped into my seat that was ripped from the floor it used to be bolted to, falling, spinning, tumbling head over heels watching first the sky appear and then the ground and then the sky again in a wildly changing kaleidoscope. Something like an old-style ViewMaster gone crazy, flipping back and forth between two images. I've also read that falling from a height of 30,000 feet at 32 feet per second, it would take me 12 minutes or so to hit the ground. But having no idea how long I was unconscious I likewise have no idea how much time I have left until impact.

I imagine that, if I had my full faculties at this point, that I would most likely be frightened to the point of death at this realization, either through a heart attack or my conscious mind just shutting down at the inevitability of certain, painful death. On the other hand, if I didn't die of fright, I wonder if I would hit the ground with such force that I would never have time to even register the agonizing pain of the moment of impact before I would be dead. I have a feeling that the anticipation would be much more painful that the actual impact.

But for now, safe in my usual exit row window seat, I stretch out my legs, turn on my mp3 player and put such thoughts out of my mind.

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Living Your Dream

Sometimes it's very difficult and painful to make people realize that you must follow YOUR dream, not theirs.

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